GLOBAL BIOENERGIES: LEUNA DEMO PLANT CENTRAL UNIT INSTALLED 40 DAYS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

Scale-up activities on track

Intensification of business development

Perspectives for market access

EVRY, France, Dec. 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Bioenergies (Alternext Paris: ALGBE) today announced the installation of the central unit at its demo plant in Leuna (Germany) 40 days ahead of schedule.

The core of the demo plant's central unit is a stainless steel 5,000 liters fermenter, representing 10 times the volume of the pilot currently up and running in Pomacle, near Reims in France. The early installation puts Global Bioenergies 40 days ahead of its construction schedule. Connection of the downstream unit, which will purify isobutene up to 99.7%, is scheduled for Q2 2016, closely followed by start-up of the demo plant in the summer.

Bernard Chaud, Head of Industrial Strategy at Global Bioenergies and CEO of IBN-One, states: "This demo plant prefigures IBN-One, the first commercial plant with an annual capacity of 50,000 tons, planned in France in partnership with Cristal Union. We are already scaling up our commercial activities: requests from industry for test isobutene batches are on the increase with the prospect of ordering large quantities of this renewable hydrocarbon in the future."

Marc Delcourt, co-founder and CEO at Global Bioenergies, comments: "We are maintaining the pace of industrial scale-up against the backdrop of growing environmental awareness across the world, despite the temporary fall in oil prices. In the short term, our target markets are largely decorrelated from the price of oil: hundreds of thousands of tonnes of isobutene have the potential for use in applications that valorize sustainable supply chains. These include specialty chemicals, cosmetics or biofuels. They constitute ample natural markets for IBN-One. The recovery to normal oil pricing levels in the medium term will allow the Isobutene process to be operated profitably in all its applications, representing a market worth US$ 20 billion."

About GLOBAL BIOENERGIES

Global Bioenergies is one of the few companies worldwide, and the only one in Europe, that is developing a process to convert renewable resources into hydrocarbons through fermentation. The Company initially focused its efforts on the production of isobutene, one of the most important petrochemical building blocks that can be converted into fuels, plastics, organic glass and elastomers. Global Bioenergies continues to improve the performances of its process, operates its industrial pilot, has begun the construction of its demo plant in Germany, and prepares the first full-scale plant through a Joint-Venture with Cristal Union, named IBN-One. The company also replicated its achievement to propylene and butadiene, two members of the gaseous olefins family, key molecules at the heart of petrochemical industry. Global Bioenergies is listed on Alternext, Euronext Paris (FR0011052257 - ALGBE).

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Contact

GLOBAL BIOENERGIES
Jean-Baptiste BARBAROUX
Head of Corporate Development
Phone:  +33 (0)1 64 98 20 50
Email: [email protected]

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